


Mother

by sunshinestealer



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Family, Gen, Raising Babies, Teen Pregnancy, teenagers eloping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 11:57:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2772155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinestealer/pseuds/sunshinestealer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of Cloud's childhood, with a specific focus on his parents - Claudia and Marcus Strife. What was Nibelheim like for a young boy whose father 'disappeared' under mysterious circumstances? How did Claudia cope with raising a child at such a young age? Gen fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother

A mother will always strive to do what is best for her children.

You were seventeen when you arrived in Nibelheim with your husband, and a newborn baby in your arms. You were merely nineteen when he went AWOL and you had to become the sole provider for your infant son.

In spite of this tragedy, you swore to be the best parent you could for little Cloud. For a few months, you held on to hope that your husband would return, as if this had been some big misunderstanding. 

Then you got a letter from Shinra in the mail, confirming the soldier’s demise, and an invitation to a military funeral in Junon. That you would not be able to attend.

It was all you could do to not break down into sobs, feeling utterly alone in the world. 

When you were younger, the elders back home near Icicle Inn ridiculed you for insisting you loved this “soldier boy”, stationed in your town to keep an eye on Shinra pipelines from the northern continent. He was about your age, and fresh out of cadet training. He had the most gorgeous cornflower-blue eyes you had ever seen, and fuzzy blond hair, growing out from his military crew cut. Your friends had introduced you him in the tavern, immediately noticing your star-struck expression. 

You had had many crushes on town boys in the past, but this one felt just right. Luckily for you, the feeling seemed to be mutual. 

Private Marcus Strife’s smile broadened at the sight of you. He recognised you from the general store you were set to inherit from your parents, further anchoring you to this cold, barren town, which dipped into darkness almost all day during the winter.

It would be unfair to doom Marcus to somewhere as dull as Icicle Inn. He confessed to you that he had joined the military so he could see the world beyond his city. A native of Midgar, he later spoke of growing up in a church orphanage following the disappearance of his mother and father. Marcus’ mother had placed her infant son into the arms of a priest and begged him to provide a better future for the child. It made you want to weep, thinking of how desperate your boyfriend’s mother must have been to make such a choice. 

***

You would later entertain this possibility during a dark Nibelheim winter. Baby Cloud felt like nothing more than a lump in your arms. The guilt you felt for feeling this way sent you quietly crying as you listened to the radio in the rocking chair he had built for you. The notion of simply striding out to the local church in the morning and leaving Cloud there in his bassinet grew more and more tempting as the night turned into the early morning.

You fall into a half-sleep with Cloud laid against your chest. You’ve spent too long wrestling with your frayed mind. Bereavement and a new baby are not a good mixture. You’re going to ask your neighbours for help, if they can. They are sympathetic to your plight, even if you received a few judgemental stares upon your arrival in Nibelheim for being so young and having a baby in your arms. They say it takes a village to raise a child. Back home, the people are extremely averse to asking for help, and take pride in owing no debts to anybody. But you are not - and would not be accepted as - a member of that community any more.

You and your son are now proud residents of Nibelheim. All you have left is each other.

***

Your first flirtations with Marcus were a little awkward. He forgot one of his pick-up lines, standing there in an awkward pose as he endeavoured to remember it, before giving up and choosing to regale you with small talk instead. You laughed at him, politely, before taking his hand and giving it a little squeeze. It seemed impossible to want to leave his presence, and this feeling only got stronger the more you saw of each other.

Eventually, you started spending as much time together as possible, even sneaking out of the house and into his barracks for impromptu ‘sleepovers’. It was always terribly exciting — you’d have to wake up much earlier than he did, quietly dress, and follow a route out of there in pitch darkness, even if cuddling up to the warmth of his body was a much more tempting thought than making your way back home in temperatures below freezing.

Of course, you got caught once or twice. The harshest punishment Marcus received was not just having disciplinary duties for a fortnight, but also losing his own room he’d earned in the barracks and having to go back to sleeping in bunks with the other cadets. This meant he couldn’t sneak out to come and visit you after lights-out, and even if he managed to do so, your parents had been advised by his Marcus’ commander to make sure you weren’t sneaking out.

So naturally, you devised a secret hiding place, just on the outskirts of town. It was only a short distance from your home. You met up every Friday evening, while your parents took the snowmobile to another town to buy wholesale supplies for the store. They’d arrive back by Saturday morning, but you had the whole evening to yourselves. You couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity.

Your dates weren’t much more than simply walking across the tundra, hands clasped in each other’s and simply talking about your lives. If you had the time, you wished you could have taken him to the hill overlooking the town, sitting together to watch as the aurora painted the twinkling sky red and green in the early hours of the morning. Perhaps you’d both regain your privileges, in time. Perhaps your parents would learn to see sense. Until then, you were content with these secretive meet-ups and hour long walks.

The thought of running away crossed your mind and came in your conversations every now and again, as two lovestruck teenagers who wanted more from the world. You’d heard of others who followed their hearts, and were very happily married for years after. Every now and again, you’d invite Marcus into your home while your parents were away, and spend a good few hours in bed together, listening to the strains of an orchestra on the radio.

But, you both decided that eloping would be a terrible idea. For now. He rolled out of bed, dressed, and waved you goodbye. Almost an hour later, you heard your parents arriving back, and made like you were tidying the store ready for a new influx of customers. 

Your attraction to each other did nothing but develop further and further.

Even then, your parents were keen to remind you (almost every dinner time, in fact) that this was a mere infatuation. You were their only child, and they would be damned if they lost you to an itinerant soldier boy. Heated arguments had ensued. Stomping up to your bedroom in floods of tears, you knew that they had a point. You were still too young as a couple - merely one year apart in age - to make decisions that would impact the rest of your future.

Little did they know that your future had already been conceived.

Living in the frozen north, it was easy to conceal your pregnancy under multiple layers of clothing. You thanked your lucky stars that you didn’t suffer with any form of illness that would have aroused suspicion. A few bouts of sickness occurred, but you were able to pass it off as a mere stomach bug. You had to have a hardy composition to live in this part of the world, and you rarely got ill. Your parents just grunted, assumed it would pass, and allowed you bedrest for a day or two.

You had told Marcus the very moment you suspected you were carrying life. After unravelling your winter wraps and revealing your slightly swollen belly in the privacy of your secret meeting place, you were terrified that the soldier would turn tail and give you the cold shoulder. It had happened to women in the magazines you read. 

But Marcus grinned in delight, firing off excited questions. _"When will it be born? Is it a boy or a girl? Do your parents know?"_

“In fact, babe… I’d been waiting until just the right moment, but…”

_Oh god._ He got down on one knee, holding out the engagement ring that was the only heirloom his mother had left to him.

“Will you marry me?”

You could not have loved him more in that moment.

***

Finding somebody to officiate your wedding was going to prove difficult in a community where everyone knew each other’s business. The engagement ring stayed tucked beneath your clothes on a silver chain around your neck, out of sight of anyone’s prying eyes. On days when you felt a little daring, you slipped the ring on to your finger, keeping it hidden beneath a thick mitten.

You didn’t care how the ceremony was to be performed — either exchanging rings or the more Ancient ritual of hand-fasting, but you knew you wanted it to be special.

Getting Marc to ask your father for your hand was out of the question. You knew he would never agree. Your parents were incredibly firm and cynical, having been hardened by the environment they were born and raised in.

You agreed to leave the marriage business for a little while. That was, until fortune smiled upon you again. Marc had been busy putting down his name for any new assignments that were posted, even writing to his superiors to ask for favourable references. He received them, having redeemed himself in his superior’s eyes by working himself hard enough to earn merits in every group exercise.

You met up with Marc in secret, where he delivered the good news. Just as well, too — your bump was now getting just a little too conspicuous.

Your fiancé was leaving for Nibelheim, a mountain town on the western continent, where a brand new Mako reactor had been built. His application had gone through swimmingly, and he was now going to be working as a guard at the Mako reactor. A house was even waiting for them in this new place to call home. It was the best 17th birthday present you could have asked for. You nearly cried, joyfully imagining how your child would grow up in such a beautiful area of the world. Nibelheim was said to be warm in the summer and mild in the winter, excepting the odd chill that ripped through the mountain valley. Still, it beat having to wear a snow suit for most of the year.

Marc accepted that it would be hard for you to leave home for somewhere so far away. But you had always spoken of how little there was here, for a spirited girl like yourself. If boys were allowed to leave this place and seek their fortune, why couldn’t you? You had tried to rationalise with yourself over and over again, but your heart won over your mind each and every time.

Writing was never your strong suit at school. You were better at practical tasks and artwork. But you hoped you had written a convincing-enough letter for your parents when they found it on Saturday morning. There would be nothing worse than being dragged back here by the police after striving so hard to get away from here. You put your pen down, biting your lip as you said a brief goodbye to the house you had called home for all your life.

It felt awfully daring, absconding in the middle of the night while Marc waited outside in a military truck, with the engine off. Blizzard conditions were expected later this week, so no search party could come after you. At least, it would slow them down considerably. You put that thought out of your mind, and held Marc’s hand as he helped you into the car. He grinned and pecked your head, before you both peeled away from the town you had been so desperate to leave.

A ferry to the tip of the North Corel region had been arranged for the following morning. You stroked your belly lovingly, promising your unborn child that you and your husband would raise him or her with the utmost care and attention. No matter what happened. The baby would not be abandoned at a church with a simple piece of jewellery. Nor would it be treated with contempt at the slightest deviation from what was considered ‘proper’ behaviour, the way your parents had raised you.

In one town on the western continent, you stopped by a large, mass wedding festival. Feeling as if this was divine providence, you singled out a priestess of Minerva and asked her to perform your ceremony in private.

The sacrament of marriage according to the Goddess was conferred upon the two of you, in the break between Mass and Communion. The priestess recited the Gift, and tapped you both on the shoulder with the ceremonial sword given to all those who had been ordained in the name of the Goddess. “Arise, as equals. Mr. and Mrs. Strife. May your days be blessed and bright.”

From there, you both travelled in a small removals truck, packed with as many supplies as one would need for a new home and a new baby. The local government would already supply mother and child with a box of provisions, once you had officially moved in. But the house was unfurnished, its last occupants having fallen into severe debts in their old age and having to move elsewhere on the pittance of what they could sell or promise as collateral to the bailiffs. It made sense to Marc to buy only what was necessary. Chairs, tables, pots, pans, and fold-out cots to sleep in until a carpenter could be contacted.

As the landscape floated by out of your window, you were drawn to thinking of names for the baby. You recalled Nibelheim as meaning “home of the cloud(s)” in the old Nibel language. So, that was your decision. Cloud. If people disapproved of the name, it could be changed to Claud. That was partially your name, after all. Claudia Strife, née Strauss.

The baby is born roughly fifty miles away from your destination. Marc shoves the gas pedal to the floor in the hopes of finding a nearby clinic, but your contractions are proceeding too quickly. He parks in the shade, gathering towels from the inside of the truck, and lays your car seat flat. He squeezes your hand tightly, and after several hours of encouragement, Cloud is born into the world. Marc delivers him and cuts the cord, wiping down the baby and quickly placing him into a clean towel, to act as his blanket.

After his first cry, the baby hardly makes a sound, and settles into his blanket to rest. Before he closed his eyes, you noticed the colour — a vivid blue, just like his father’s. You’re exhausted, and want to sleep the rest of the way there, but you can’t. Marc drives for another hour or so, and you never thought you’d be more grateful to see a town sign.

Your husband parks in an area behind the square, which your house overlooks. He quickly sets up two cots and urges you to rest, with Cloud by your side. You wake up several hours later, to find the house partially furnished, and Marc half-asleep with Cloud in an old rocking chair — one of the few furniture items left behind by the previous occupants.

You’re ragged and worn out, but at least you are now in a safe place to call home, with the man you love, and the child you are going to nurture for the next eighteen years of your life. You’re both brought back around from your fatigue when Cloud begins to cry the place down.


End file.
